Coup’s Takeaways: HEAT Take Jalen Brunson’s Best Shot And Punch Their Ticket To The Eastern Conference Finals

1. Things are always going to get tense once you get to Game 6, but Miami was the only side that looked a little tight after the opening minutes. A remedy for that wasn’t too far off.

They weren’t necessarily defending poorly – Bam Adebayo was seeing to that – but the Knicks were making tough shots, getting to the line and running in transition off Miami’s misses. What felt like a rock fight suddenly became a 14-point Knicks advantage, with Jalen Brunson scoring 18 of the first 34 for New York, and while Miami answered back with a 7-0 run the opening quarter belonged to the visitors.

Five minutes into the second, the entire lead was erased with an 8-0 run and Miami led with Erik Spoelstra going to zone soon as Tom Thibodeau tried to buy Brunson a couple, literally two, minutes on the bench. Again, Adebayo was seeing to that, protecting the rim on one end while regularly getting to it on the other. Brunson returned and kept doing what he’s been doing all series (22 points on 11 shots in the first half), and aside from RJ Barret’s 10 points Adebayo (17 on 12 first-half shots) was the only other player in double digits. A similar situation to Game 5 at the break, the score tight (51-50 HEAT) despite Miami shooting poorly having made just 2-of-12 from deep. 

A whole lot of ground and pound basketball – neither side finished over 30 percent from three – the rest of the way. New York kept pace thanks to some tough shotmaking from Brunson and a couple more from Julius Randle, but they weren’t getting to their game at all – midway through the third they had just 10 points in the paint. The threes still weren’t hitting despite a far more fluid offense than the visitors, Miami led 74-71 after three nevertheless having held their opponent to 40 points over the previous two quarters combined.

Brunson did his best despite seeing regular soft doubles, almost single-handedly carrying New York’s offense down the stretch, but all it took was a couple makes on Miami’s end – an Adebayo jumper here, a Max Strus three there off a double team on Butler – to edge out a six-point lead that felt double that given the crawl of the game. A little Kyle Lowry craft and pointed defense down the stretch hands the HEAT a 96-92 victory and a third trip to the Eastern Conference Finals in the past four years.

2. The Knicks have had three scorers in this series and not much else, with all of Brunson, Randle and Barrett averaging about 20 or better and nobody else on the team in double digits. Their win condition, generally speaking, has been for those three to combine for around 75 points while the role players add a decent number of threes.

Only Brunson (41 points on 22 shots) held up his end of the bargain – Randle and Barrett combining for four made field goals and 26 points – and then some. Brunson was so good, so unguardable for most of the game that Miami essentially resorted to double-teaming him every time down the floor. Even then, he made some shots. What was interesting was that unlike New York’s doubles on Butler (24 points on 22 shots), which have been relatively hard traps against his isolations, Miami essentially brought a second player – often Adebayo, if he was involved in the screen, but sometimes anyone – and shaded his every movement, not forcing him to give up the ball but making sure he knew any drive would be met with extra attention. And with New York down two with the ball in the final 30 seconds, it was that extra attention which trapped Brunson on the right side of the floor and forced a turnover – strangely, Miami was far more aggressive in the passing lanes off their Brunson coverage than New York was off their even more forceful Butler coverages – that eventually led to Miami’s two-possession lead.

Hard to believe anyone, even a HEAT supporter, could come away with anything but respect for Brunson after this series, but if you needed any additional convincing the way Miami played him in the second half should tell you everything you need to know about how they felt about him.

3. Add this one to the list of elite Bam Adebayo playoff performances. This hasn’t been a series for prolific scoring for Adebayo, and for very good reason. The Knicks have been crowding his paint catches with three, sometimes even four, defenders at a time and sending help on any isolation that gets going towards the rim. Maybe you could say that New York loosened up a little in the paint, but mostly this was just a brute force effort on Adebayo’s part as he capitalized on every split-second of space and drove hard before defenders could react.

It was the defense, as always, that really sealed the deal. Randle was once again unable to shake Adebayo’s presence and Adebayo was more than happy to absorb every back-down power dribble sent his direction. Miami’s shrinking, helping scheme is what it is for a reason, but if you want to know why New York had just 20 points in the paint and why Randle shot 3-of-14, look no further than Adebayo. There might be no better example in the league for how you don’t need to be a seven-foot shotblocker in order to protect the rim – all that speed and agility getting to the ball on the ground a full half-second before anyone else matters just as much as meeting the ball in the air. Nothing about the line – 23 points on 20 shots, nine rebounds – will stand out. Just know that Adebayo, who has referred to ‘ball in the air, ball on the floor’ regularly throughout this series as a key category, owned the margins, the corners, the footnote and everything between the lines.